News & Updates from
the Milton Historical Society
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Aubrey's Corner:
Milton's namesake a revolutionary, too
By Aubrey Morris
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Editorial note: This article, donated by the Aubrey Morris estate, was first published in the Milton Herald on October 26, 2006.
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Many of the houses in the new city of Milton can easily be called manors.
Touring the many undulating acres of hillsides and creek bottoms, their miles of pretty white fences frame horses grazing away amidst lavish mansions. It gives a visitor to this gem of Atlanta suburbs a sense of arriving in Utopia.
Except, of course, during morning and afternoon rush hours!
Even at that, Milton doesn’t have, nor is it likely ever to boast, a genuine castle. At least not like the one where Capt. John Milton, the Revolutionary War officer whose name is memorialized by Old Milton County and the new Town of Milton, briefly resided:
Castillo de San Marcos.
This National Monument, built by the Spanish between 1672 and 1695, at St. Augustine, Florida, to protect the first European settlement in the continental U.S., was the exclusive home of our reincarnated namesake, Capt. Milton, for nine months.
A prisoner of the British, who held East Florida during the Revolutionary War period, Capt. Milton was confined to the most foreboding portion of the castle, the infamous dungeon. He found his every word, going and coming, censored.
But our stout hero did languish long. After Milton’s sojourn at San Marcos, his prisoner exchange with the enemy came nearly a year later and followed the British and Indian capture of Fort Howe, in Georgia, in February 1777.
The gallant Georgia officer, apparently a rising favorite among Gen. George Washington’s officer corps, was itching to get back to duty. This according to Joe Reynolds, retired telephone executive residing in Alpharetta, and like Capt. Milton, a native of Burke County, Ga.
Mr. Reynolds thinks it’s more than a coincidence that First Lieutenant John Milton, while languishing in that dank dungeon well below ocean level in the lower depths of Castillo de San Marcos, was promoted to captain of the First Georgia Regiment in General Washington’s Continental Army. A speedy advancement, one might aver from John’s beginning with the rank of ensign. He had joined the fight against Mother Britain leaving his comfortable plantation several thousand acres, “Paden Aram,” in upper Burke County in January 1776, a little over a year earlier.
Former prisoner Milton, with visions of his dungeon days at Castillo de San Marcos rapidly fading away, was soon back in the fray.
With plenty of fighting for the Patriot Cause yet to be done, one might conjecture that Capt. Milton was more focused on helping General Washington’s Continental Army and its allies win independence, than in getting back to his horses, social calendar, and other aspects of the “good life.”
Then only in his late 20s or early 30s, Captain Milton had been romancing a lovely young and proper Charlestonian, Miss Hannah E. Spencer.
Furthermore, the lass had the right family connections, through the Pinckney Family, one of the most illustrious families in South Carolina. What else could a young officer ask?
While the captain was jousting with Cupid, other battles were going on, or looming largely, all around him, from Charleston to Savannah to Augusta.
And the call of politics could also be heard in the land. Sometime in 1777, according to the Dictionary of Georgia Biography, Vol. II (University of Georgia Press), the Georgia Legislature elected Milton the state’s first Secretary of State, a position he was to hold until 1799. Things then really began popping.
In an order, issued at ‘Chas. Town’ (Charleston, S.C.), Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, by then Washington’s Continental southern commander, hastily directed the following order to Captain John Milton, at, or near Savannah, Ga.:
“Chas. Town, Feby. 25, 1780 - Sir: As this town will probably be besieged, if not invested, in a few days - I think it unsafe for the interest of the State of Georgia to suffer her public papers to remain in it - in a siege they would be constantly exposed to fire, and other accidents.
You will therefore be pleased to remove in the Continl. Waggon, ordered you, the public papers of Georgia, to Monk’s Corner, and, if then Mr. Parker one of the Treasurers of this State, and an Officer of the continental loans, will take them into his possession, & engage to secure them as he secures ye. public papers of So. Carolina to his care - you may, I believe, wt. safety deliver them to him…” *
Young Captain Milton, a man on the move, sure set the right pace for today’s “Modern Miltonians!”
* Excerpted from General Lincoln’s order to Captain John Milton…A photostat of the original, from the Letterbook of Benjamin Lincoln in the Boston Public Library.
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Castillo de San Marcos,
St. Augustine, Florida
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Parade Ground at Castillo |
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A personal remembrance of Aubrey Morris
by Carl Jackson
Aubrey Morris was a legend in the Atlanta media from the 1940s until his retirement in the 1980s. During most of that time, Aubrey was News and Editorial Director at WSB Radio. In those days, WSB was the dominant radio news station in Atlanta (still is) and was the place to go for breaking news for most Atlantans. I grew up listening to Aubrey, and was fortunate to have an internship at WSB Radio in 1974. (Editor's note: Carl was a high school senior at the time.)
The first day I reported to the newsroom, I was scared to death. I was in the land of media giants, and one of the first people I met was Mr. Morris. He must have wondered what he would do to keep me busy, but he took one look at me and told me to clear the news wire machines and sort the stories and updates. I wasn't exactly sure what he wanted, but from that moment forward, I felt like I was part of something. Aubrey Morris made me feel at home. He was focused, a little bit gruff, and he fearlessly interviewed presidents as well as paupers. He was the best-known radio newsman in the South. I later worked at WSB Radio for a time during and after college, but I will never forget the day I met a legend. Many years later, it is a treat to read Aubrey's historical accounts of his beloved Milton area home.
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Distinguished Author and Cultural Icon
by Connie Mashburn
So just who was Aubrey Richard Morris (1922-2012)? Aubrey grew up in Roswell. During his high school years at Milton High School, he was the Roswell correspondent for the Atlanta Journal newspaper. Aubrey graduated from the University of Georgia, Henry W. Grady College of Journalism in 1945. While there, he was editor of both the school newspaper and the UGA yearbook.
Morris was hired as a reporter by the Atlanta Journal, and spent 13 years as the newspaper's police reporter. In 1957, the WSB radio program director hired Aubrey to create and manage a news department. Morris served as the WSB news and editorial director for over 30 years. He was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame and the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame.
After retiring from WSB, Aubrey and his wife Tera relocated to Milton, where they lived in a house that was once the residence of his grandparents. A lover of local history, Morris wrote over 150 columns for the Alpharetta & Roswell ReVue newspaper. Tera Morris has generously allowed the Milton Historical Society to copy the columns.
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James Wright Shirley at his home
in the 1950s
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Dora Josephine Strickland Shirley
circa 1895
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The Shirley Family
by Robert Meyers
The Shirley family is one of the pioneer families in the North Fulton area. Perhaps not as well known today in Milton as the Broadwells, Ruckers and a few other local families, the Shirleys were industrious and successful farmers and business leaders and quite influential in the area.
So, who were the Shirleys? Where did they come from? What was their influence in this area?
James Wright Shirley (1868 – 1960), his wife Dora Josephine Strickland (1870 – 1931) and their ten children lived in a home on an oak-covered hillside facing what was once the Cane (or Caney) Creek Valley, now Lake Windward. Cane Creek is a tributary of the Chestatee River. According to Mr. Shirley, the creek was named after a Cherokee Indian Chief Cane. Just below the house was a large building housing the Stono post office, store and grain mill, owned by Mr. Shirley. Nearby was a huge barn and adjacent corn crib.
The Shirleys lived well as James maintained three stores (a large building housing a general store, a mill and post office in Stono just below their house, a general store in Ocee and the Farm Merchandise Store in downtown Alpharetta), and a 500-acre farm with five tenant houses. Mail was received at the post office three times a week from Duluth and had to be distributed to recipients. Dora was probably the person who wrote under the pen name “Dry Bones” for the Milton Democrat, a newspaper published in Alpharetta.
James Wright Shirley was my grandfather. My mother was one of three Shirley daughters who left the farm to seek their fortunes. She studied business at Young Harris College in North Georgia and obtained a job in Atlanta as the assistant to the CEO of a millinery company. My father, from Massachusetts, was a student at Ohio State. After a spat with his parents, he hopped in his car and headed south. We’re not sure why he stopped in Atlanta, but he had to find a job and walked into the office where my mother worked. The rest is history, and I was raised in the North. By sheer coincidence, I accepted a job with Scientific Atlanta and ended up buying a home on what was my grandfather’s farm many years ago.
According to my cousin Fred Shirley, Granddaddy’s farm was very modern for the time. In the 1920s, his sons constructed a phone system from his store in Stono to his store in Ocee. The boys cut the poles, ran the lines and hooked up the system. His home had electricity long before electricity arrived in rural areas. Granddaddy’s Delco Light Farm Electric System, consisting of a generator hooked to shelves of glass jars containing acid that acted as storage batteries, provided electricity and running water for his house. I have fond memories of staying in that house while visiting my Georgia kin during summer vacations and of hard-fought corn cob fights with my cousins in the loft of the nearby barn.
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Barn on James Wright Shirley's farm, painting by Freddy Shirley |
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In a book he wrote circa 2008, cousin Freddy profiled our grandfather. Freddy noted that Granddaddy was ambidextrous and practiced writing his signature with either hand so the signatures would always be the same. Freddy’s widow Shirley Shirley (yes, Freddy’s wife’s first name is Shirley) passed on to me ledgers from Granddaddy’s stores in Stono and Alpharetta where he practiced writing his signature with both hands on the inside covers.
Local historian Connie Mashburn remembers that Freddy was a star football player at Milton High School in the mid-1950s.
Granddaddy was a dominant personality in the community. A frequent speaker at the Union Hill Baptist Church, a leading businessman and a successful farmer, his opinions carried great weight. He was six feet tall and quite skinny according to my cousin Sally David whose parents lived with Grandaddy during his final years to take care of him. He made daily walks around his property, one section a day, so that by the end of the week he had walked the entire property, making sure that the work was getting done—much of it by his children. My deceased aunt Lillian Mansell, my mother’s sister, told me in an interview in 2000 that “Daddy would walk around through the fields to make sure we were working…He was the walkingist man I’ve ever seen…. Daddy hired the men to plow and the women picked the cotton.” He chewed Brown Mule tobacco, much to the chagrin of the children who sat in the back seat of the car when Granddaddy was driving, chewing and spitting out the window. “The stuff would go all over the unlucky individuals sitting directly behind him,” said Aunt Lillian. “We used to duck down a lot,” says Sally.
The Shirley family has traced its lineage in detail to the Norman Conquest of 1066 thanks to a seminal work completed in 1841 titled “Stemmata Shirleiana” by Evelyn Philip Shirley. A branch of the Shirley’s ended up in Kilkenny, Ireland, and I had the pleasure of visiting with them a few years ago.
The Shirley’s from whom I am descended arrived in the New World in 1643 when a young Thomas Shirley immigrated from Kilkenny to Northumberland, Virginia where he became a successful tobacco farmer. Some of his more adventurous descendants migrated to the area near Honea Path, South Carolina in 1783 to take advantage of cheap land purchased from the Cherokee Indians and put up for sale by the State. Sixty years later, having heard about the lush property available in North Georgia following the 1832 Gold Land Lottery of land lots, Benjamin Emaziah Shirley and his family loaded all their earthy possessions onto a horse-drawn wagon and headed toward Atlanta. They traveled on a roadway built to support the construction of a new railway. Benjamin found land that suited him and purchased land lots 1249, 1250 and part of 1238 for the tidy sum of $350. He named his property Stono after the battle of Stono Crossing of the War of 1812 where his father had fought. Stono became the postal address for that area.
The Civil War had a major economic impact on the area known as Old Milton County during and for many years after the war. The Government listing of Civil War Soldiers lists 327 Shirley’s as serving in the war, 183 on the Confederate side and 144 on the Union side.
As an aside, the red barn at the intersection of Webb Bridge and Southlake was built by my uncle Monroe Ellis, husband of my mother’s sister Oma Shirley, in the late 1930s. It was said “If you wanted a barn build solid, Monroe was the one to build it.”
My lifelong experiences with the Shirley family, and other local kin (most anyone with the last name of Mansell, Bates, Ellis, Webb, Strickland and some others are related to me) has been a formative influence on the life of this transplanted Yankee. There are so many stories my kin could tell if only they were still with us.
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James Wright Shirley at his home in the 1950s |
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Georgia Moments in History
Vann Cherokee Cabin
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The Vann Cherokee Cabin is the oldest verifiable building in Cave Spring, Georgia, and is listed as a National Trail of Tears site. Built in 1810, the Vann Cherokee Cabin was originally discovered beneath the dilapidated structure of the Green Hotel by a local citizen. Hotel rooms had been added to the cabin obscuring the original structure. After extensive research, the two-story, hand-hewed log cabin was verified to be built by Avery Vann of the Cherokee Nation. It has been recently restored.
Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation; used with permission.
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Muse of the month!
Wisdom from the Kennebec, Maine Historical Society:
"Several years ago, a good friend told me that history is like a jigsaw puzzle and time has scattered the pieces. It is the goal of (historical societies) to look for the pieces and find their proper places in the puzzle of history."
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Nothing new under the sun...
Remember the early days of COVID-19? Eight A.M. runs to the grocery to pick up our lowly cans of beans and tuna before other shoppers touched them. Then home to the garage where the non-perishables languished for days on a table or rack in hopes that whatever contaminants were there would die or fall off on the garage floor. Then into the house to be wiped with whatever disinfectant wipes one could score at Target. (Perhaps some of us are still in this mode - we know who we are!)
The text below is reminiscent of our current pandemic. A recent read of the book Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel turned up adaptations to the plague present in 17th century Florence. Galileo’s two daughters were sequestered as young teens in the Convent of San Matteo outside of Florence. This was for their own protection since, being born without benefit of clergy, it was thought that they could not enter into a proper marriage. The book outlines the life of Galileo and ends, of course, with his dust-up with the Church in Rome over the question of which heavenly body, Earth or Sun, was stationary in the Solar System.
“Incoming letters (to the convent) had to be grasped by forceps and then tanned with acid or bathed in vinegar or held near a flame to purge them of possible contaminants. Any food procured from outside the convent’s own kitchen garden had to be purchased early in the morning, before it had a chance to be handled by too many shoppers in the marketplace. When the steward took the convent’s grain to the mill, he was enjoined to guard it throughout the grinding, making sure that no other grain got mixed in with it and no one else so much as touched it, then collect the finished flour in the same sack he came with and carry it straight back to be baked into bread immediately.” Florence, Italy, 1630
Ms. Sobel adds after this passage that the convent was free of vermin for a good reason - the Poor Clares were so short of food that even the rats wouldn’t bother to enter!
contributed by the Editorial Staff
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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) |
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Galileo with one of his early inventions - a telescope |
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Milton Historical Society 2020 Patrons
Many thanks for your support!
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Lifetime Patrons
Mark and Amy Amick
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Bill Lusk
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Sustaining Patrons
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Family Patrons
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Gregg and Mary Cronk
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Corporate Sponsors
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We Love our Founding Members! |
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Ron Wallace
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Mark Amick
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